How CMOs Can Inform Tales To Handle Change [Case Study]

Chief advertising and marketing officers ought to consider and synthesize success tales to be taught from previous advertising and marketing efforts, establish repeatable methods, and display the return on funding (ROI) of their work to stakeholders.

Finally, this may also help to drive higher future campaigns and enterprise outcomes.

As Steve Jobs as soon as noticed, “Essentially the most highly effective individual on this planet is the storyteller. The storyteller units the imaginative and prescient, values, and agenda of a complete era that’s to return.”

Telling Tales To Handle Change And Uncertainty

Storytelling is necessary as a result of it’s a elementary approach that people join, share experiences, and be taught.

It fosters empathy, creativity, and emotional intelligence whereas additionally serving to to construct relationships, convey advanced concepts, and encourage motion.

Mondelēz Worldwide, a Fortune 500 firm in over 150 nations, generated round $36 billion in internet income in 2024.

Its well-known worldwide and native manufacturers embody Oreo, Ritz, and Tate’s Bake Store cookies and baked items, together with chocolate favorites like Cadbury Dairy Milk and Toblerone.

(Disclosure: I used to be a member of a group of material consultants who taught a bespoke digital advertising and marketing coaching program for lots of of entrepreneurs at Mondelēz Worldwide. I can share its story now with out violating my non-disclosure settlement as a result of it has since made this info public.)

Mondelēz Worldwide’s Journey To Buyer-Centric Development

The problem for any Fortune 500 CMO is navigating the ever-evolving shopper habits and technological developments.

Mondelēz Worldwide, a world snack big, affords a compelling blueprint for not solely reacting to vary, but additionally proactively shaping it.

Its journey, spanning a number of years, highlights the vital parts of foresight, collaboration, and a deep dedication to understanding the client.

Embracing Empathy At Scale

Again in 2019, Mondelēz acknowledged a elementary shift in shopper expectations. The will for generic model messaging was waning, changed by a yearning for familiarity and personalization.

This perception spurred a strategic pivot, transferring the corporate from a margin-focused method to 1 centered on progress, fueled by elevated advertising and marketing funding and an idea it termed “empathy at scale.”

This wasn’t nearly amassing information; it was about establishing the appropriate reference to the appropriate buyer on the proper time.

The early days of the pandemic underscored the knowledge of this shift.

Whereas shopper habits was in flux, Mondelēz’s prior funding in digital maturity and adaptability offered the agility wanted to adapt.

The bedrock of this technique was a profound understanding of its customers, permitting it to create real worth, a precept that is still timeless within the face of uncertainty.

Mondelez India’s Automation-Pushed Success

Mondelez India has achieved outstanding success by means of automation, notably within the various Indian market.

Its modern method to advert personalization has demonstrated the transformative energy of selling automation and machine studying in creating deep buyer connections and driving important gross sales.

In the course of the Diwali festive season, Mondelez India acknowledged the immense worth of native relevance for its Cadbury Celebrations present containers.

It ingeniously leveraged voice AI and ML to create advertisements that includes megastar Shah Rukh Khan, through which he personally named native shops promoting their merchandise.

This expertise enabled the environment friendly era of a staggering 130,000 movies, every tailor-made to a selected retailer.

Utilizing YouTube’s superior contextual concentrating on, the marketing campaign matched advert variations with the appropriate viewers based mostly on their proximity to native shops.

This hyper-local method resonated strongly, leading to a 60% improve in YouTube engagement, 42% progress in gross sales at native shops, and 33 million present containers offered throughout the festive season. The marketing campaign underscored the facility of constructing customers really feel straight seen and acknowledged inside their native context.

Mondelez India additional pushed the boundaries of advert personalization with its marketing campaign for Perk, a chocolate model fashionable amongst youth.

Recognizing the cultural phenomenon of “cancel tradition,” the model aimed to inject humor and encourage levity.

Utilizing AI to establish 2.5 million of probably the most searched movies, it created {custom} disclaimers that playfully warned viewers of potential “triggers” throughout the content material, comparable to a carrot being aggressively chopped in a cooking video.

These quick, pre-roll advertisements have been seamlessly built-in into every of the hundreds of thousands of trending movies utilizing Google’s custom-built API and Director Combine expertise.

The marketing campaign’s intelligent and extremely contextualized method resonated with viewers, bringing in a formidable 84 million views, 635 million impressions, and a 20% spike in gross sales.

It demonstrated how injecting well timed cultural relevance, powered by automation, can seize consideration and drive enterprise outcomes.

Bridging The Artwork And Science Of Advertising and marketing

The execution of “empathy at scale” demanded a elementary transformation in how Mondelēz operated. It wasn’t sufficient to have insightful information; the model wanted to activate it successfully.

This required a robust synergy between the “artwork” of selling and the “science” of information.

A pivotal aspect was the robust partnership between the chief advertising and marketing and gross sales officer and the architect of their information infrastructure. This collaboration was the engine driving their digital transformation.

Recognizing the necessity for strong information administration, Mondelēz partnered with Google Cloud to construct regional information hubs for first-party information.

Critically, it additionally invested in coaching its groups to leverage these new capabilities. This wasn’t nearly expertise adoption; it was about empowering its folks to harness the facility of information.

This strategic overhaul yielded spectacular outcomes. By integrating beforehand siloed information, Mondelēz gained a holistic view of its customers, enabling it to ship customized content material that lower by means of the noise.

This human-driven strategic shift, augmented by expertise, resulted in important ROI will increase globally and within the U.S., laying a stable basis for sustained progress.

Leveraging AI To Scale Personalization And Attain New Audiences

The advertising and marketing panorama continues to evolve, with viewers fragmentation throughout media platforms turning into a big problem.

For manufacturers with deep heritage, like Cadbury, the added complexity lies in extending their attain past conventional channels to interact new generations.

The story of Cadbury’s Creme Egg affords a robust illustration of the way to navigate this problem.

Confronted with elevated competitors and cost-of-living pressures impacting shopper spending, Cadbury acknowledged the necessity to join with Gen Z and Millennials, who have been much less engaged with conventional TV promoting.

Constructing on its present digital presence, notably on YouTube, the model explored the potential of AI-powered video promoting. Initially, adapting its present TV advert for digital appeared like probably the most cost-effective method.

Nonetheless, it found that YouTube’s AI advert codecs, particularly Video Attain Campaigns, required a various vary of inventive belongings constructed from the bottom up. This realization highlighted the significance of platform-specific inventive methods.

By a collaboration with Google’s Artistic Works group and its inventive company VCCP, Cadbury embraced this problem. It developed a sequence of belongings for an AI-driven marketing campaign centered round its iconic “How do you eat yours?” slogan.

Leveraging shopper analysis, it highlighted completely different consuming kinds, creating quirky and fascinating video statements in numerous codecs, from six-second bumpers to longer advertisements with compelling story arcs.

By offering a various content material ecosystem, Cadbury empowered YouTube’s AI to successfully match the appropriate Creme Egg message with the appropriate viewer on the proper time.

This method, managed by means of a single marketing campaign, allowed the AI to optimize advert supply based mostly on enterprise objectives and viewers alerts much more successfully than guide changes.

Regardless of financial pressures, the success of this AI-powered marketing campaign, which targeted on maximizing distinctive attain, led to elevated funding in each manufacturing and media, demonstrating the facility of AI to boost campaigns whereas underscoring the enduring significance of human creativity.

Key Takeaways For CMOs

This sequence of Mondelēz Worldwide case research affords priceless insights for CMOs searching for to navigate the complexities of recent advertising and marketing and foster customer-centric progress.

A number of key takeaways emerge from these examples.

1. Buyer Empathy Serves As The Foundational Factor For Sustainable Development

Mondelēz’s early recognition of the need to prioritize understanding its prospects over solely specializing in margin proved pivotal.

This “empathy at scale” method turned the cornerstone of its subsequent achievements.

This goes past mere information assortment; true empathy includes using these insights to generate real worth for the client by deeply understanding their wants and needs.

The resilience of this customer-centric technique was notably evident throughout the pandemic, enabling Mondelēz to adapt swiftly on account of its preexisting robust understanding of its customers.

2. Hyper-Personalization Carried out At Scale Drives Vital Outcomes

The success of Mondelez India with campaigns for Cadbury Celebrations and Perk illustrates the transformative potential of selling automation and machine studying in delivering customized experiences on a big scale.

The Cadbury Celebrations marketing campaign brilliantly demonstrated the impression of hyper-local personalization, making customers really feel straight seen and acknowledged inside their very own communities.

Moreover, the Perk marketing campaign highlighted the effectiveness of incorporating well timed cultural relevance, powered by AI, to chop by means of the noise and resonate successfully with audiences.

3. Bridging The Hole Between The Artwork And Science Of Advertising and marketing Is Important For Success

Efficient advertising and marketing in right this moment’s panorama calls for a powerful synergy between the inventive points of selling and the analytical energy of information.

Attaining this requires vital cross-functional collaboration, notably a powerful working relationship between the CMO/CSO and the info infrastructure architect to drive digital transformation.

Investing in strong information infrastructure is just a part of the equation; CMOs should additionally prioritize coaching their groups to successfully make the most of these new capabilities.

Finally, integrating siloed information to achieve a holistic view of the client allows more practical personalization and improves general return on funding.

Abstract

Whereas AI is a robust device for scaling personalization and reaching new audiences, it necessitates a strategic method.

AI can help manufacturers in overcoming the problem of reaching more and more fragmented audiences throughout quite a few platforms.

Nonetheless, it’s essential to acknowledge that platform-specific inventive is commonly needed, as merely repurposing conventional inventive for digital platforms is probably not optimum.

AI-powered advert codecs typically require tailor-made inventive methods developed from the outset.

Regardless of the capabilities of AI, human creativity stays important. Compelling and fascinating inventive, pushed by human insights, remains to be elementary to marketing campaign success.

Even in periods of financial strain, investing in AI-powered campaigns targeted on maximizing distinctive attain can yield important outcomes and justify additional funding on this expertise.

The Mondelēz journey underscores the significance of a elementary shift in direction of customer-centricity, enabled by strategic investments in expertise, information, and expertise.

By embracing these rules, CMOs can equip their Fortune 500 firms to not solely climate the storms of change and uncertainty, but additionally to emerge stronger and extra related with their prospects.

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